Ann Arbor News parent company MLive Media Group signed a lease this week for about 12,400 square feet of first- and second-floor office space in the 111 North Ashley building, formerly Ashley Terrace, on the northwest corner of West Huron and North Ashley streets. The Ann Arbor News currently leases space at 301 E. Liberty St.

“We are very excited about our new location,” said Laurel Champion, general manager of southeast Michigan for MLive Media Group. “This is a significant step for us as an organization to have the opportunity to build our new culture together as MLive Media Group and The Ann Arbor News.”

“We are continuing to invest significantly in this community to build out a progressive, state-of-the-art news hub that reflects the collaborative, mobile work environment that we embrace. Having a prominent and visible downtown location that welcomes our customers and community is very important to us,” she continued.

Situated on the corner of a highly trafficked downtown Ann Arbor intersection, the 111 North Ashley building will give The Ann Arbor News and MLive Media Group increased visibility from the street, helping to create a vibrant newsroom, advertising office and digital operations center.

It also will keep journalists in close proximity to city government offices, courts, downtown businesses and the University of Michigan campus.

About 70 employees from The Ann Arbor News and MLive Media Group will occupy space on the first two floors of the 111 North Ashley building, with an internal staircase connecting the floors.

The design of the new office, called a hub, will be similar to hubs opened in other MLive Media Group markets in the state, including Grand Rapids, Lansing, Flint and Kalamazoo.

Grand Rapids-based Progressive AE will design the space with an open floor plan to encourage collaboration and mobility among employees. There will be meeting rooms, lounges and digital displays used to show web and TV news feeds, marketing messages and news conferences.

“Moving into this new space in vibrant, downtown Ann Arbor offers us the opportunity for deeper client collaborations in an open-hub concept that fuels creativity,” said Christy Keizer, regional sales director for MLive Media Group in Ann Arbor and Detroit. “ Having worked in several of our MLive Media Group hubs across the state, I am personally excited to bring this cutting edge facility to our Ann Arbor team knowing it will fuel further innovation for our advertisers.”

The public will be welcome in the new Ann Arbor hub to pitch stories, sign up for newspaper subscriptions and provide feedback.

Renovations to the space will start immediately, and the company plans to move in early 2014.

Joseph Freed & Associates developed Ashley Terrace in 2007 with 99 condominium units and first- and second-floor office space. Freed sought to "extend" the traditional downtown and capitalize on the building boom in Ann Arbor at the time, as well as fill a need for a perceived shortage of downtown condominiums.

The Ann Arbor News and MLive Media Group will occupy about 12,400 square feet on the first and second floors of the 111 North Ashley building.The Ann Arbor News

The building fell into foreclosure in 2010, and Bloomfield Hills-based Alidade Capital took ownership a year later and rebranded it as 111 North Ashley.

"I covered the construction of this building from its proposal, and attended the groundbreaking for it," said Paula Gardner, editor of The Ann Arbor News. "Yet as familiar as I thought I was with it, I was surprised at just how connected I felt to the city as I stood at the second-floor windows and spotted the Block M at Michigan Stadium, along with the blocks of South Main Street.”

"There are a lot of changes in this part of downtown, and I'm excited now to be moving our offices into this building and be a part of that,” Gardner continued.

The new Ann Arbor News and MLive Media Group office will replace the company’s existing offices, on the southeast corner of East Liberty Street and South Fifth Avenue.

AnnArbor.com launched in summer 2009 with a street-level storefront and seventh floor offices in the 301 E. Liberty building. The company welcomed the public in the street-level space with free Wi-Fi, coffee and computers for public use, until that space was converted to offices in 2012.

On Sept. 12, AnnArbor.com shut down after four years as a standalone website, and its content moved to the MLive.com online and mobile news platforms. The twice-weekly AnnArbor.com print publication was rebranded as The Ann Arbor News.

Formed in Feb. 2012, MLive Media Group includes The Ann Arbor News and seven other Michigan newspapers, along with the MLive.com web site. The company has also expanded its two digital markets that do not publish daily newspapers: Detroit and Lansing.

The space of approximately 11,500 square feet vacated by The Ann Arbor News and MLive in the 301 E. Liberty building will be listed for lease. Ann Arbor’s Dahlmann Properties purchased the seven-story building in June for $10.6 million, property records show.

Lizzy Alfs is a business reporter for The Ann Arbor News. Reach her at 734-623-2584, email her lizzyalfs@mlive.com or follow her on Twitter.